Upspoken Cinema: Interview With Joshua Polanski (Discursions in Time Film Club)

In anticipation for the start of the Discursions in Time: Slow and Poetic Cinema(s) — A Guided Film Club, set to begin in March, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Benoit Rouilly for Unspoken Cinema. Rouilly's blog on Contemporary Contemplative Cinema (CCC) is the oldest blog on contemplative cinema available in English & French.

From my own personal background with slow and poetic cinema to the silent political visuals of Estonia in Pikk Street (1966) to the process of curating the watchlist for the Discursions club, I greatly enjoyed my conversation with Benoit and it's range of topics.

Below is an excerpt from Unspoken Cinema.

UNSPOKEN CINEMA: Hi Joshua. Thank you for agreeing to this interview, and for organising such a beautiful event : an online guided film club around Slow & Poetic Cinema. Before getting into the subject, could you tell us about yourself… You have graduated in the academic study of religion and political theology, this must inform a unique relationship with cinema. How do you view cinema in general and Slow Cinema in particular through this angle? Do you seek for the spiritual like Paul Schrader’s Transcendental Style in Film (1972) or do you consider Slow Cinema a secular practice and endeavour above all?

JOSHUA POLANSKI: Great question. I think my academic background helps me most of all with being able to closely read a "text" through its relationship to power. And, in many ways, slow cinema is ripe with interesting case studies on this front. The films we most commonly associate with the so-called slow cinema movement tend to be films from outside of North America and Western Europe, the center of global power. The Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz, for instance, claims to be trying to capture “Mindanao time” or “Malay time," which is, in some way, counter to the capitalistic experience of time we have here in North America.

My degrees also help me more practically too when it comes to understanding the religious context of aesthetics when relevant. You bring up Paul Schrader and it's ironic because I went to the same, small Christian undergraduate school as him (Calvin College). We held the same position at the student paper too. I crossed paths with him a few times. So, of course, his thoughts in Transcendental Style have influenced me. It's possible to make slow cinema in this more spiritual tradition(s). The incredibly spiritual Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell from a few years ago is a great example of this. We will look at some of these films in our club too. The Tsai Ming-liang film we are watching is in a very direct way about a different way to be present in the world—a way that comes from a conversation with Buddhism. 

On Schrader, I also think his own orientalism skews his view of Ozu to the point that he is largely wrong about the great Japanese director... but that's a conversation for another day. He also has some very serious allegations against him now too. 

At the end of the day, I don't think slow cinema is just one thing. It is many things and none at the same time. It can be very spiritual—and from a variety of different kinds of spiritualities too—as we will see. It can also be materialistic, as with something like Wang Bing's Youth (Spring). There, the slowness of the passing of time is meant to be experienced in a way that doesn't point us to any spiritual truths but rather makes us feel the work of these textile laborers. Slow cinema is diverse and it holds multitudes.

UNSPOKEN CINEMA: I like how you differentiate between Lav DIAZ (decolonialism) and WANG Bing (materialism) since they address politics (or lack thereof) in very different fashion.
How and when did you discover Slow Cinema? Which was the first film that made you think, out there, exists another kind of cinema and that you were going to dive into its (contemplative) embrace?

JOSHUA POLANSKI: There are a few ways I could answer this question. Chronologically, much like (and probably because of) Schrader, it would have been Robert Bresson's Pickpocket. I was a first year college student and I rented the film from a Family Video back when those were still around. I watched it with someone else and they fell asleep 10 minutes in. I was mesmerized and tried to get the other person to watch it with me after they woke up. 

I didn't follow up on this impulse the way I should have. That took me time. When Schrader came to campus for the premiere of First Reformed, that sparked me to really dive more in-depth and to chase this other, non-Hollywood cinema that I found more interesting. 

Right around the same time, I found Jia Zhangke's A Touch of Sin. I watched that film at 3:00am and immediately rewatched it after finishing it. I have never done that before or since. There was no going back after finding Jia. Ironically, I would find out shortly after, A Touch of Sin might be his most kinetic film. Still Life is my favorite of his. I love how he breaks his realism with fantasy there. I cried the first time I saw the building fly away. It was such a rupture with the meandering style preceding. There is no reason slow cinema should be married to realism.

Continue reading at Unspoken Cinema.